Monday, June 29, 2015

Note: This brief account appeared in
several US newspapers. So far, no more detailed report on these events has been
discovered.

***

FULL TEXT: Four married woman of Podbizka, in Bohemia, were
convicted of having poisoned their husbands at a party which one of them had
given for that purpose. They were sentenced to penal servitude for life.

LOCATION: A kraj during the Kingdom of Bohemia. Also known
as “Podbrdsko at Beroun”; Proper Czech spelling:or Kraj Podbrdský (kraj , “region”; the largest administrative unit in Czech
government). Bohemia retained its name and formal status as a separate
Kingdom of Bohemia until 1918.

By adhering to the codes of politically correct censorship
the experts on domestic violence have allowed a grotesquely false notion to
persist among the public that women are not dangerous perpetrators of the
massacres which are termed by criminologists “family annihilation.” It is time
to end this politically correct hoax.

FULL TEXT: One of the most fearful crimes which has ever
been committed in the south of France, took place on the 27th ult. at
Marseilles. The following particulars are taken from the local papers:

About half-past five o’clock yesterday morning, as the
workmen of the building yard known as the Pharo were proceeding to work, a
terrible scene was enacted in a hotel restaurant, kept by M. Bonnefoy. Five
pistol shots were heard in succession, and immediately after the attention of
the men was directed to the spot by cries of “Help!” and “Murder!” The house
was entirely barricaded, and all the keys had been hidden in order to prevent
any one from putting a stop to the execution of the crime. A few courageous men
soon broke in the door of the restaurant, while some others got in by a window
on the first floor, which had been opened by Bonnefoy. Here is what had taken
place a few moments before: At about the hour mentioned above, Madame Bonnefoy
had risen as usual, and descended into the kitchen to make the coffee. But
instead of lighting the fire she went into the shop, where, with her back
against the door and a six barreled revolver in her hand, she waited till the
rest of the family came down stairs. The first person who presented herself was
her sister Annette, against whom she had lately conceived a violent hatred, in
consequence of some attentions paid her by one of the customers of the house,
who, it turns out, was Madame Bonnefoy’s lover. She bad no sooner descended the
last staircase than Madame Bonnefoy sent a bullet into her breast. Without
stopping to look at her victim, the murderess bounded up-stairs into the room where
her own three children were sleeping. She first approached the cradle of the
youngest, a boy of five years. She bent down, put the pistol to his heart, and
fired. The noise of the fire immediately aroused the other two children, whose
bed was by the side of the cradle. She again cocked her weapon.

“Mother, mother,” murmured the elder, what are you doing’?”

“Do not be afraid,” replied the wretched woman, “you have
nothing to fear, all the money will be for you.”

And placing the revolver near the other child’s heart she
fired, telling the elder child to be off.

The boy went down stairs trembling. The mother followed. On
reaching the shop the woman took another staircase leading to the bedroom of
her husband. Bonnefoy, aroused by the pistol shots and shrieks of his
sister-in-law Annette, had put on his clothes and was about to descend, when he
met his wife. Without saying a word she raised the revolver and fired, sending
a bullet into his stomach. Having finished her butchery the murderess now
determined to shoot herself. She bad already recocked the revolver, and was
holding it toward her head, when her boy ran into the room crying,

“Mother — oh, mother, what are you going to do?”

“Hold your tongue, will you,” was her reply; “ I have spared
you and you will be rich.”

Placing her finger on the trigger, she fired, and lodged a
bullet in her own head and fell insensible on the ground. Medical assistance
was soon at hand, and the victims forthwith taken to the hospital. Strange to
say, none of them were killed, although all of them are seriously wounded.
Operations were immediately performed to extract the bullets, but in the cases
of the youngest child and the father the doctors have not vet succeeded, and it
is feared that they cannot live long. The wretched author of the tragedy is the
least in danger. The motives which led to the crime appear to be partly
jealousy and partly remorse. Madame Bonnefoy has for a long time past led a
very irregular life. Frequent dissections in the family were the consequence,
and the girl Annette always sided with the husband. A day or two before the
crime a quarrel had taken place in the restaurant between the customer above
alluded to and Bonnefoy, at which Madame Bonnefoy was present. It was noticed
that the woman was touched with remorse at her guilty conduct, and, from
letters which she wrote during the night, it appears she thereupon determined
to make a holocaust of the whole family, including her lover. Why she spared
the child may be easily conjectured.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Note: Although this source mentions only the final moments
of this bandit’s career involving a large-scale massacre, it is presumed that
her “bloodthirsty” banditry involved multiple earlier murders.

***

FULL TEXT: Shanghai, July 27 – “Old Mother” Djao, said to be
the most notorious and blood-thirsty bandit the province of Shantung ever
produced, has been executed at Irhowfu, in Shantung, according to reports
received in Shanghai by mission organizations. These advices add that the
dreaded feminine bandit underwent that most fearsome of Chinese death
penalties, the ling-che, or, in English, the slicing process. [also known as
“death by a thousand cuts”].

Forty-seven years old and an expert horsewoman, “Old
Mother’’ Djao led a band of several hundred out-laws who terrorized a broad
area. It is related of her that last summer she planned an attack against
Ichowfu after calling to her aid two added groups of bandits. They had assembled
at a place near the village of Balihsiang when a homeguard of villagers, known
as the “Big Knife Society.” Apprised of their purpose, attacked them and
suffered utter defeat.

~ Not a Person or Animal Spared. ~

The villagers were driven back into Balihsiang and the
bandits followed them. Then the gates of the village were closed and every man
was shot down. Sixty women and children then were lined up, and “Old Mother”
Djao was asked what to do with them. Her orders to kill them all were carried
out with the result that every man, woman and child who was within the walls
after the gates had been closed was slain. Even the cattle and dogs of the
village suffered the same fate.

Ling-che is simply vivisection done by experts in such a
manner that the victim survives in a conscious state through hours of a
terrible ordeal.

FULL TEXT: The tragic fate of the unwanted child has grown to be a serious
social problem in England, especially during and since the war. How many
hundreds of these hapless infants who come into the world unsought, and when
they, do arrive are uncared for and ill-treated until death ends their
sufferings, no statistics will ever reveal. It is chiefly from mothers in the
upper and middle class circles of society that they spring, but they are
transplanted almost immediately into most vicious baby farming rings, bartered
for a few pounds, and destined not to live long enough to cause a loss to those
who adopt them.

WITHIN THE LAW

Organisations for their welfare multiply, but still the toll of infant
life continues under most nefarious conditions. Very few cases of deliberate murder
have been legally established in the last quarter of a century, but there are
thousands of others in which the professional baby farmer has accomplished her
cruel designs without bringing herself within the meshes of the law. The
details of heartless cruelties developed at recent trials of professional ‘baby
farmers’ have stirred all England. Take the case of a woman in the west of
England, kindly, benevolent soul to all outward appearance, living in a
respectable suburb, who answered advertisements by the score for someone to
give motherly care to children [the reference id to Daisy Chivers]. She
conceived a refined idea of murder. Before the first pound of the £20 or £40
received had been expended the child’s doom was settled.

SLOWLY BUT SURELY

She was careful to give the victims entrusted to her charge plenty of food,
to keep the surroundings of the home cleanly, and apparently to be stow upon
the mites an affection which disarmed suspicion. But her hand guided them to
their little graves certainly and surely. On a bleak day when a keen east wind
was chilling the warmest clad folk to the marrow, she was wont to take the
children by turns into the garden to give them an airing. Her visits were
prolonged by protracted chats with neighbors over the wall and soon underneath
the solitary wrap covering the baby in her arms there was a potential victim to
bronchitis and pneumonia.Three such deaths occurred within a few weeks, all
due to natural causes, as the doctor who was called in at the last minute was
bound to certify. It was a much less dangerous way of sacrificing life than
stinting the infants in food or leaving them unattended, but it was none the
less effectual as the means to the end which was undoubtedly in the mind of the
unscrupulous foster-mother. It was, of course, deliberate murder in each case,
but there was no means of proving if. Cases like this and many involving
fiendish cruelty have recently been engaging the attention of the police and
officials of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The cases are many and varied in their wickedness.

DEATH SENTENCE

There was an instance a few years ago where the proprietor of a children’s
home was summoned to court for neglecting one of the inmates. It transpired in
the evidence that there was a child in the home for whom, a sum of over five
hundred pounds had been deposited. This was one of the unwanted children from
the upper classes, the father being a member of a titled family. The manager of
the home greedily took the money, promised every care to the infant — and left
it in filth and neglect like a deserted animal. Some of the most serious cases
have been those affecting children who were adopted. Sach and Walters were
women who adopted children and made away with them. The women received various
sums of money. They were convicted and sentenced to death. James and Wallis,
man and woman, were both both similarly caught and convicted of seeking babies
for adoption and murdering them. They were sentenced to death. These people
were in the habit of adopting children. The Wallis woman smothered one child in
a railway carriage shortly after receiving it, so much in a hurry was she to
get rid of the little one.

MUST BE REGISTERED

There have been many other serious cases, in all of which it has been
proved that there are numbers of people anxious to get rid of children and
willing to pay considerable sums of money to accomplish their pur pose. Knowing
this, callous and mercenary people have made a business of adoptions, with no
desire or intention to care for the children whopass into their hands. As the result of
experience, there is a movement to enact a law that all adoptions should be
registered, and that all children adopted should be subject to regular and
systematic visitation. Various motives have been found to prompt people who
offer to adopt children. There are those who, obviously, have no other desire
than that of providing a good home and caring for any child who may be en
trusted to them. These are generally people, without families, or who have lost
a child. Others think of adopting a child much as they would of taking a
canary, or buying a dog. It is a passing mood, and they tire as quickly of one
as of the other. A case that illustrates the ease with which children can be
disposed of and, incidentally, the perils lurking behind an advertisement, is
that of a girl who was in a home in London, and who, as the result of an
advertisement in a religious paper offering ‘a good Christian home,’ was
adopted by a woman of independent means living in or near Worcester. For a time
the child was treated properly. Afterward she was made to do most of the work
in a twelve roomed house, rising between five and six in the morning, and never
going to bed until midnight. She was found with thirty-four scars on her body,
many of a terrible nature; she still bears some of the marks.

LOTS OF OFFERS

In 1911 the woman who adopted the girl and a man who horsewhipped her were
sent to prison for two years with hard labor, the maximum punishment under the
Children Act. The case created an enormous sensation. The custody of the girl
was given to the children’s society; she is now a young woman doing well, but
suffering in health from the treatment she received nine years ago. Advertisements
in newspapers are very useful to people who have no desire beyond that of
evading their responsibilities in respect to their children. Two people, the
man fifty years of age (married), the woman thirty-two (single), were living
together. In September this year a child was born to them. The man advertised
in a London morning paper asking someone to adopt the baby ‘for love.’ There
was a reply from people who wanted a boy to be brought up with their little
girl. The child has a good home, and will no doubt be well looked after, but
neither the father nor the mother is contributing to its maintenance. It is
known that two other children have been disposed of by this same couple in the
same way, no inquiries having been made by them as to the suitability of either
home.

BRUTAL ILL TREATMENT

This haphazard method of disposing of children is common. Some years ago
most of the reputable newspapers discontinued advertisements. This rule has
been relaxed since the war, but lately, on bringing facts to the notice of the
the proprietors of some papers, such advertisements are again excluded. It
would be one of the further advantages resulting from the legalising of
adoption, and setting up an authority for the purpose, if the practice of
advertising could be abolished. Children are frequently disposed of in most
casual ways. About the month of November, 1918, a woman calling at the registry
office on other business found there the names of people willing to adopt a
child. Without, apparently, making any attempt to satisfy herself that her
illegitimate boy would be well treated she placed it with a man and woman who
consented to take the child without pay ment. In less than a month the boy,
only four years old, was found to be a mass of bruises, after being, so the
inspector discovered, frightfully beaten with a belt. The doctor who gave
evidence in the court said that never in the course of his twenty-five years’
practice had he seen such a case of brutal ill-treatment. Peculiar ideas are
held as to agreements by many people who make them. They appear to think that
by signing a paper they have performed a legal and binding act. A lazy and
neglectful father disposed of his boy and his wife at the same time. The
document in this case was:

STRANGE AGREEMENTS

“I. A. B., do hereby state that I leave my household goods to my wife C. D.
Also that I have received £1 off E. F. so that he shall take to my wife and
keep them.

Signed,

A.B.”

There are many cases in which children who are adopted without money
payments are exposed to grave moral danger. A woman was sent to prison for a
month for aiding andabetting the
keeping of a disreputable resort. She was also prosecuted, under the Children
Act, in respect of her adopted daughter, who was exposed to the risk of being ruined.
A girl aged ten years who was adopted by distant relatives was made to. sleep
with a lodger aged 60, a man addicted to drink. She was ill-treated and beaten
until the society intervened, when the girl was removed to the home of the
parents. A man, lazy and uninclined to work, and whose wife was of idle habits,
lived in a scantily furnished and filthy home. They advertised, and adopted a
healthy illegitimate baby a fortnight old. They were promised £20 with the
child, but received only £5. On receiving a complaint a police inspector made
a visit, and found the child, then nineteen months old, very thin, dirty, and
in great pain through a large swelling in the groin. The child was removed to
the infirmary, afterward taken away by relatives, and soon died. The people
who adopted the child were sent to prison for three months. A feature of this
case was that their own child, despite their surroundings, was well looked
after. This is a common experience — the child of the family cared for, the
adopted child neglected. There is no case in the court records where this
condition has been reversed.

GOOD PROPOSITIONS

Considerable sums of money are obtained by people with children whom they
adopt, though in many cases the children do not reap any benefit. A man and his
wife adopted ten children for sums ranging from £5 to £50. It was proved that
several thousand pounds had been received by these people, who were prosecuted
by the authorities for failing to notify the reception of the children as
required under the provisions of the Children’s Act. Five of the children were
never allowed out of doors. It has always been part of the adoption agents’
scheme of operation to have babies handed over at railway stations, much of the
difficulty in tracing children being due to this fact. One woman in Lancashire,
well known to the authorities, and more than once prosecuted for various
offences in connection with nursing children, has long been in the habit of
sending young children to the north by night trains.

GATE THE CHILD AWAY

Most of the transactions of her agents are carried out at railway stations. Documents relating to this woman and her doings run into hundreds of
folios. Bearing all this in mind, it is somewhat disquieting to learn that
the recently formed societies are carrying out the transfer of some of their
children at stations. The chief constable of a northern city, with an inspector
of the children’s society, interviewed two women who had been seen with children,
and the chief constable told them they would be detained until he found out
what had become of two children they had disposed of at the railway station.
They then gave particulars, though admitting that they very seldom went to see
what the homes were like be fore the children were handed over. The attendant
at the waiting room stated that the two women came to the room about 10 am.,
carrying a baby, and remained there until 10:30, when two other women came with
a girl, apparently about twelve years old. There was some conversation; the
baby was handed over to one of the women, who took it away. No money passed,
and no paper was signed.

SORROWFUL PARTING

The two women who arrived first at the waiting room then left, returning
shortly afterward with a young woman about twenty years old, who was carrying a
baby. She told the woman the child was six weeks old. There was some talk,
papers were put on the table, and money was passed. The young, girl went away
much affected by parting from her baby. There is an agitation to have a law
passed providing for the visitation of adopted children by the Ministry of
Health. This reform, if it can be brought about, will greatly hearten those who
have for years been striving to mitigate, if not to entirely remove, the
grave evils surrounding the subject of child adoption.

Note: Although this story describes only a single death
(through starvation and neglect), the account is quite valuable is providing a
picture of the experience of a typical victim of a manipulative baby farmer.
This utterly heartbreaking account of the brief life, exploitation and death
baby Bolan and the hellish experience the mother was put through by
unaccountable “helpers” is the same story that has been repeated hundreds of
thousands of times.

***

FULL TEXT: Philadelphia, Pa. – Refusing to entertain a
motion for a new trial, although Attorney John Robb, counsel for the defendant
argued for over a half hour, Judge Carpenter today sentenced Mrs. Niettie Van
Sarver, convicted “baby farmer,” to pay a fine of $100 and costs. Mr. Robb
first tried to get the costs taken from his client, then asked for a new trial.
Hot words passed between him and Judge Carpenter when the attorney said, “A new
trial should be given, as your honor instructed the jury by letter on this
case.”

“That is not true!” said Judge Carpenter.

“I have it direct from the jurors,” said Mr. Robb.

“The juror who says that does not speak the truth,” said the
judge, “the jury sent in to ask the definition of a word and I gave it – that
is all. Besides, it is not any of your business what the jury asks me.”

Mrs. Laura Hawkins, convicted on the same charges upon which
Mrs. Van Sarver was given a trial, made a motion for a new trial, made a motion
for a new trial through her attorney, Ralph Tannehill. It will be argued later.
She was released in $1,000 bail. The women were to have appeared in court at
9:30 a. m. to receive sentence, but neither came till after 10 o’clock.

GIRLS TELL STORIES.

After a trial, during which girls told of taking their
babies to Mrs. Van Sarver for her to find homes for them, women told of
obtaining babies from the same woman through “ads” in the newspapers, and a
policeman, Mrs. Ida Forsaith, told how, during her investigation of the case,
Mrs. Van Sarver offered her the position as assistant, saying she should make
from $50 to $75 a week. Mrs. Van Server was convicted of a misdemeanor for
which she could be fined but not imprisoned. Wednesday of this week Mrs.
Hawkins was convicted on two charges. Both women were accused of conducting a
baby farm without a license and of trafficking in infants. Mrs. Van Sarver
yesterday was placed in charge of her counsel, Attorney John Robb, without
bail.

One of the most pitiful features of the case was the bitter
disappointment of Mary Bolan of Arnold, aged 24, who was the principal witness
against Mrs. Hawkins. Mary told how her baby was born in August. 1913; how she
saw an “ad” in a newspaper that a young couple wanted to adopt a baby and how,
on the strength of the “ad” she took the baby to Mrs. Hawkins. According to
Mary’s story, Mrs. Hawkins said she would raise the baby as her own, provided
Mary would give her $50 for lawyer’s fees for adoption proceedings.

COULD NOT SEE CHILD.

Mary could pay only $30, she said. Since Mary placed the
baby, aged 6 weeks, Mrs. Hawkins’ care, she has not seen it. Repeatedly she
wrote and telephoned Mrs. Hawkins, asking to see the baby, but was refused, she
said. Letters were read in court alleged to have been written Mrs. Hawkins, in
which she threatened Mary with the possibly sending the child to a charitable
institution unless of Mary paid the rest of the money.

Mary says she then asked Mrs. Hawkins to giver the baby
back, but Mrs. Hawkins would not do it. Mary came to the trial and testified,
thinking all the time that now she would see the little one restored to her
arms. She asked Mrs. Hawkins in the courtroom to tell her where the baby was,
but Mrs. Hawkins turned her back on the pleading girl.

BABY PEDDLED ABOUT.

The baby had died May 15, 1916, and no person had the
courage to tell the poor little mother until yesterday, Detective Homer Crooks,
unable to stand the wistful pleading of her inquiries, kindly and gently told
her that she would never see her baby again. Ay first Mary could not believe
it. Then she cried, and cried, and cried all afternoon. “I never would have
left the baby only she said it would have a good home.” she sobbed over and
over. “She told me she would care for it better than I could. She said she
would give it a good home.” So sure was Mary been that she would get her baby,
that she had purchased, at the noon recess, some pretty little garments for
the child.

The history of the baby, as traced, is as follows: Mary gave
the baby to Mrs. Hawkins, Oct. 12, 1915. Mrs. Hawkins gave the baby to Mrs.
Sarver Oct. 15. Mrs. Sarver advertised in the papers for parents to adopt a
baby. Mrs. Quinn answered the “ad” and received the baby Nov. 1. Mrs. Quinn
brought the baby back to Mrs. Van Sarver in a few weeks and the juvenile court
took it Jan. 5, 1916. “Why didn’t Mrs. Hawkins let me have it back when she
didn’t want it?” is Mary’s wail. “She could have had the $30. I’ll never forget
what they made my baby suffer.”

Thursday, June 25, 2015

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): St. Louis, Nov. 18. – If the
charges against Midwife [Henrietta] Bamberger are true, she is one of the
greatest criminals in the history of the world. Sworn statements accuse her of
killing no less than 300 women and infants during her career in St. Louis.

The grand jury has returned one indictment for murder and
four for manslaughter against her. her resort, on Chouteau avenue, was a
veritable charnel house, it is said, where unfortunate girls met death and
where infants were killed and then burned to destroy evidence of horrible
crimes. Sworn statements in support of these charges have been made by Lizzie
Rieger, Mary Haar And Katie Bleckinger, who reside now at 1829 South Tenth
street,but were formerly employed in
Mrs. Bamberger’s house. As a result of this testimony, Mrs. Bamberger has been
indicted for murder in the first degree on specific charges, and, besides,
there is an indictment pending against her for manslaughter in the first degree
and on three other charges.

The sworn statements of the three women charge that among
some of Mrs. Bamberger’s victims was Louisa Miller, whose body was found in the
Meramec river, near Luxembourg. The witnesses claim that Mrs. Baumberger packed
this girl’s body in a trunk, paid an expressman $50 to haul it away from her
house and with her own hands threw the trunk from the wagon into the Meramec
river from a bridge.

Lizzie Bessert disappeared in September, 1897, but her body
was never found. It is charged that it was buried in Mrs. Bainberger’s cellar.

A Bohemian woman, who lived near Ninth and Southard streets,
is said to have been disposed of in the same manner.

Miss Colekamp (or Kulkamp), a girl of Mexico, Mo., died in
March, 1894, and her death has never been explained.

Ida New, of Marino, Ill., died April 3, 1894, in the
Bamberger house.

A child of Mrs. Dugan, of Thirteenth street and Blair
avenue, also died there.

It is also charged that bogus certificates were secured to
bury some of the victims, that a fake doctor on South Broadway issued the
certificates for $50 in each case. The authorities worked up the present case
against Mrs. Baumberger as a result of the expose that 37-year-old Wilhelmena
Spoeri, of 3432 Illinois avenue, met death in the resort. Mrs. Baumberger and
John B. Texler, the young man in the case, were arrested at the same time, and
their trial comes up next Wednesday. These facts developed in the Spoeri
affair, enabled the authorities to dig up other alleged crimes. All of the
cases specified above are sworn to by the three young women mentioned.

[“Wholesale Murderess – St. Louis Midwife Charged With an
Awful List of Crimes. They May Aggregate Fully 300 – Children and Young Women
Killed In Her Resort – And Were Buried Secretly.” The Pittsburg Press (Pa.),
Nov. 19, 1899, p. 2]

***

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Mrs. Henrietta Bamberger,
midwife, of 919 Chouteau avenue, St. Louis, Mo., is a murderous fiend in
woman’s form, a life-taking monster, slaying women and babies under the cloak
of a ministering physician, if the evidence on which the grand jury indicted
her recently be true. The testimony of four persons stamps her as a degenerate
of the Holmes type, a murderess, brutal as Mrs. Nack, a creature without an
atom of humanity in her heart.

She burned and drowned babes, and killed young women and
disposed of their bodies. One she carted off in an express wagon and cast into
a river.

Another she buried in the cellar or her own stable, a third
she buried under a fictitious name from her own house. Eye-witnesses have
testified to the crimes. They charge that as many as four babes were burned in
one day and the total number of these crimes charged by the witnesses is almost
incredible. The details of the specific killing alleged against Mrs. Bamberger
are almost past belief. The woman stands indicted for four murders. One is a
murder in the first degree; the others manslaughter. Information alleging other
crimes is being investigated. The Chouteau avenue house will be thoroughly
searched for further evidence. The cellar will be searched for traces of
craves. Any number of crimes that may be alleged against the woman would not
surprise the officials who have been engaged in bringing about her indictment.
The crimes charged in the indictments were committed durlne the last five
years. Mrs. Bambereer was in business in the same house many years before that.

It is not probable that her motnoas were ever different from
the present.

The testimony on which the indictments were found was given
by women formerly in Mrs. Bamberger’s employ as nurses or servants. This
testimony is corroborated in part by material evidence, such as jewelry and
clothing worn by the victims, and a photograph of one of them. The young women
who are said to have died through Mrs. Bamberger’s instrumentality, dis
appeared from their homes and none has been heard of by relatives since.

The discovery of the true character of Mrs. Bambereer’s
business and tho crimes for which she now stands indicted was made by accident.
An inkling the murders reached the office of Circuit Attorney Eggers six months
ago. He made an investigation. The developments corroborated his first
information. He applied to the police department for assistance. Detectives
Lally and Harrington wore assigned.

Since that time Mr. Eggers, his assistant, Mr. Hodgdon and
Detectives Lally and Harrington have worked in conjunction to unearth the
crimes charged. They encountered many obstacles and overcame seemingly
impassable barriers in the investigation.

The other day they had placed before the grand jury
sufficient evidence to warrant indictments. Mrs. Bamberger was arrested by the
detectives, who merely told her that the chief of police wanted to see her.
Mrs. Bamberger was locked up in the holdover.

Subsequently Mr. Eggers swore out a bench warrant for her
and the woman was placed in jail. The evidence is considered almost sufficient
as it now stands, but the circuit attorney and the detectives are working to
secure additional corroboration. It is charged that Mrs. Bamberger committed the
crimes for hire. It was her business in perform operations and destroy
evidences of this business. Women from far and near placed themselves under her
care. Under the circumstances which surrounded the contracts between Mrs.
Bamberger and her patients it is reasonable to suppose that the patients did
not tell friends and relatives of the compacts. Consequently when one of the
patients died, her relatives were not notified. She was considered missing.
Mrs. Bamberger’s former nurses declare that as many as twenty patients were
treated in one day. They say thousands of babes were burned. This latter
statement is considered extravagant. Lizzie Rieger, the chief witness, declared
that she saw five babies burned in one day.

She said hundreds of infants that she did not see were
destroyed. She declared that Mrs. Bamberger tossed one infant into a tub of
water and then grasping it by the neck, choked it and held it under water
several minutes. Lyda Bressert went, according to the story, to Mrs. Bamberger
for treatment in September, 1897. Mrs. Bamberger locked her in one of the rooms
to smother her cries, that they might not be heard from the street.

The nurse was at Lyda’s side while the latter died. The
nurse declared that Mrs. Bamberger tied the girl’s arms across her breast with
a towel and swore like a fiend because she said she would have to pay “him”
another $50 to get rid of that one. Mary Hohlcamp of Mexico, Mo., the witnesses
say, died from an operation some time early in November. 1896. The nurses declare
that the girl asked Mrs. Bamberger to notify her parents at Mexico should she
die, but that Mrs. Bamberger did nothing of the kind. Annie Zimmerman of
Marine, Ill., became a patient at the Bamberger house in October, 1894. An
operation was performed and the girl died some days later. The nurses declare
that Mrs. Bamberger doubled up the corpse, placed it in a trunk and had it
carried to the Merrimac river, they say.

Unlocked the trunk, liftef th body out alone, und heaved it
over tho bridge railing into the water. Names of those known to the circuit
attorney:

Mrs. Wilhelmlna Spoerl of 3432 Illinois avenue, St. Louis,
died at her home, July 11, 1899, after treatment by Mrs. Bamberger on July 1.

The house is a three-story brick structure, and stands back
from the pavement and there is a side yard. The building is dingy on the
outside. There is no front entrance. There is a small porch on the side of the
house. The door hear leads into a hall at the foot of a stairway. Doors open
from this hall into the parlor and into the second room. There are nine rooms
in the house, three on each floor. The front room on the first floor was
furnished as a parlor in plain style. The second room was the operating room.

There was an operating table in the apartment. A corner at
the back of the house is cut off by a porch, which gives the kitchen less width
than the other rooms. Doors from this porch lead into the middle room and into
a hall that runs between the kitchen and the building wall. This hall runs from
a door opening into the rear yard to the door opening into the middle room.

It was in this hall that the baby was strangled and drowned.
There was one witness in the kitchen and an other in the hall when the
murderess committed the deed. A back stair
way runs up from this hall.

The party of officials ascended the front stairway, preceded
by Kinzle.

They had inquired of the latter the location of his mother’s instruments and he
had told them that he knew nothing about his mother’s possessions. Mrs.
Bamberger declares that she is innocent. She asserts that the evidence against
her is false, and that it was inspired by motives of revenge.

FULL
TEXT (Article 3 of 3): St. Louis, Mo., March 16. – The jury in the case of Mrs.
Henrietta Bamberger, the midwife, today returned a verdict of guilty of the
charge of manslaughter and fixed her punishment at five years in the
penitentiary. It was charged that she caused the death of Wilhelmina Spechir
[or, Spoeri], a girl who came to Mrs. Bamberger for relief.

FULL TEXT: London, December 26. – The
fears of the Paris police that whole sale murdering of infants had been carried
on in a maternity home in the city, to which their attention had been directed,
have been realised to a shocking degree. In a sudden descent on the home the
police found a stove, which had evidently been used for the ghastly work of
consuming the bodies of murdered infants. A closer examination of the premises
has now been made, and this has revealed evidence from which it is estimated
that 1500 infants have been cremated in the home.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Paris Jan. 12 – A Paris
maternity nurse and her servant have been arrested on a charge of having
murdered more thirst 100 infants within the last twelve months. A second charge
is that a score of women have died in her house as the result at illicit
operations.

The bodies of the infants are believed to have been burned
in a large stove and it is stated that medical man who was the woman’s
accomplice will shortly be arrested.

The
accused worsen lived in the neighborhood of the National Library and received into
her home women on the eve of maternity. This had gone on for considerable time
and the midwife had acquired a large clientele.

~
Discovered by Accident. ~

A
short time ago M. Labat, the commissary of the Vivienne quarter a visit from a
banker who complained of the loss of a jewel of great value and brought direct
charge of stealing it against a woman who had suddenly broken off relations
with him. The commissary ordered a search to be for the woman, and finally she
was found in the house of the midwife. She was questioned and protested her
innocence. What struck the police however absence of the infant to which she
had just given birth and they remarked that, although there were in the house
four woman lodgers in a state of convalescence, there was not a trace of a
single child.

On
the circumstances being reported to the commissary, he summoned the midwife to
his office and interrogated her but to all his questions she opposed a
obstinate silence. The commissary consequently sent inspectors to question
people in the house, and it was ascertained that within a year more than 100
pensionnaires had been received, besides occasional visitors but that a child
had never been seen in the house.

~ The
Mystery Solved. ~

A
search warrant was obtained tad in house were found instrument at drugs which
corroborated the inferences drawn from the earlier inquiries. The mystery of
the disappearance of the newborn infants remained unsolved until the commissary
turned his attention to a large stove in the dining-room.Examination of this led to the belief that
the woman had been in the habit of cutting up the bodies and burning them. It
would appear that more than 100 little bodies had thus been reduced to in this
stove.

The
midwife and her servant was taken into custody in spite of their obstinate
dentals. Further developments are certain and numerous other arrests are likely
to be the consequence. Several women who availed themselves of services of the
midwife are known will be followed up

[“Ogress
Chops Infants Into Bits and Puts Them Into Stove - Discovered Accidentally -
Paris Police on Track of a Missing Jewel Stumble Across Sensational Crime -
Over One Hundred Children Said to Have Been Cremated in the Last Twelve
Months.” The Washington Herald (D.C.), Jan. 13, 1907, p. 3]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): The Paris
newspapers report a horrible discovery in a maternity house kept by a midwife
near the National library. According to the Journal, the police commissary of
the Vivienne quarter found a stove built into one of the walls of the
establishment in which newly-born infants were cremated.

The Paris correspondent of the London
“Times” of December 28 says:—

The particulars of the horrible crime
which has just been discovered here recall. The old-time histories of the ogres
who devoured little children. It is affirmed, indeed, that more than a thousand
bodies of infants have been burned in a “salamandre” stove by one of those
criminal midwives known here as les
faisseuses d’angès [angel-makers]. The alleged facts are as follows :—

A bank clerk, Léon de Re, was
suspected a short time ago of having embezzled a sum of 16,000 francs {£610}.
But before being arrested he was watched by detectives. They discovered that he
went almost daily to a house in the Rue Trqaetonne [sp. ?] to see a young girl
whom he bad placed there with a midwife, Mme. Veuve Chartier. When, a few days
later, the girl returned to De Re’s rooms and remained for sometime ill in bed,
the police commissionary suspected that there had been some malpractice. On
being questioned she confessed that see had undergone an operation for
producing abortion. De Re and Mme. Chartier were arrested. They denied all
collusion in criminal practices, bat the girl insisted, and her assertions were
corroborated by those of Mme. Chartier’s maidservant. The latter told an
extraordinary story. The product of the abortion was burned, according to her,
in the salamandre” stove. It had had more than 150 predecessors during the past
year. The “salamandre” was immediately placed under seals, together with the
obstetric appurtenances discovered in the apartment. While the case of De Re’s
mistress was being investigated, various other affairs of the same kind were
discovered. The police got on the track of a woman agent for the midwife, and
it is rumored that several doctors are implicated. This is the point reached
thus far by the authorities in their investigation of the affair.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Hipolitów, Podlasie
province, Poland – On November 10, 2012 Beata
Z., 42, was arrested on suspicion of murdering five newborns – three boys and
two girls – over a period of 12 years. Corpses were found at her farm in an
attic, a cellar and in a stable. Beata pleaded innocent, asserting that she was
not guilty of deliberate homicide but rather of merely failing to give
assistance. Yet in Polish law there exists a legal obligation to look after the
safety of a newborn child.

In May 2014 the court at Lomza
disagreed, holding that she deliberately intended to cause the five deaths,
finding her guilty and sentencing her to 25 years in prison. The prosecutor had
sought a sentence of life in prison. The appeal court at Bialystock upheld
this judgment on October 14, 2014.

A letter from Beata to her eldest
daughter, in which she admitted the murders, was introduced into evidence. The
killings occurred in 2000, 2003, 2008, 2010 and 2012.

Female serial killers are a rarely studied phenomenon,
according to Harrison, perhaps because of culturally ingrained notions
that women would be incapable of such crimes. But this can be a deadly
misconception.

In her study, [Marissa Harrison Penn State psychology
professor] wrote that unwillingness to believe the idea of a woman serial
killer may allow murderers to get away with their crimes — on average, female
serial killers are able to evade arrest for twice as long as men are.
Their victims pay for that extra time.